It was first posted by photographer Jason Ward on Monday and credited to Martin Le-May.

After #WeaselPecker gained momentum, British media soon picked up the story, and television channel ITV interviewed Le-May.

The amateur photographer from Essex, near London, told the broadcaster he had been walking with his wife in Hornchurch Country Park, Essex, when they heard "a distressed squawking" noise and spotted the woodpecker.

"Just after I switched from my binoculars to my camera the bird flew across us and slightly in our direction; suddenly it was obvious it had a small mammal on its back and this was a struggle for life," Le-May said.

Eventually, Le-May told ITV, the weasel -- known as a "least weasel" in some countries -- lost its grip and the bird flew away.

Marina Pacheco, chief executive of Britain's Mammal Society told CNN the image looked genuine and that it was possible an omnivorous weasel would take on a woodpecker.

"Weasels will go for anything that looks like food -- they've got a high metabolism and they've got to eat a lot," she said. "It doesn't surprise me that a weasel took a punt -- I've seen a photo of a weasel charging a group of sparrows, they're very hungry animals."

But she said the weasel, which would generally try to break the neck of its prey to subdue it, may have exceeded its abilities in this case.

"I think it was a bit of a long shot -- it looks like it tried to grab the neck of the woodpecker to break it," Pacheco said. "I think that it probably doesn't have a big enough jaw to bite through the spine of the woodpecker."

Weasels would not normally target green woodpeckers, Pacheco said -- their predators are normally the size of a stoat or larger. But the birds are known to spend a fair amount of time on the ground pulling up worms and hunting insects.

"If the woodpecker had managed to hit the weasel with its beak it would have been the end of the weasel," she said. "They're quite gung-ho little creatures."

The pluckiness of the weasel spawned a number of parodies on Twitter, with manipulated images showing the creature in turn being ridden by Russian President Vladimir Putin, popstar Miley Cyrus, football star John Terry -- and even what appears to be a dog dressed in a Darth Vader costume.

As for the bird? The green woodpecker is also known as a "yaffle" for its laughing call. After the shock of being targeted by a hungry weasel wears off, we can only hope it lives up to its nickname.

As expected, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a rousing speech to Congress, rich in historic imagery and replete with literary references. Yet a speech filled with powerful words is no substitute for a strategy for actually preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

As national security adviser Susan Rice told the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Monday, "Precisely because this is such a serious issue, we must weigh the different options before us and choose the best one. Sound bites won't stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon."

The Obama administration, on the other hand, is making a strong and credible case that the deal it is pursuing would block Iran's pathways to developing the fissile material necessary for a bomb and extend the time for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a bomb from today's estimated three months to at least a year.

Without a deal, Iran would revert to building up its stockpile of nuclear uranium, while the international community would lose the ability to monitor and track Iran's activities.

At the top of the list of questions the Prime Minister failed to address is how such a scenario in the wake of "no deal" would actually make Israel safer?

As Rice said: "Here's what's likely to happen without a deal. Iran will install and operate advanced centrifuges. Iran will seek to fuel its (plutonium) reactor in Arak. Iran will rebuild its uranium stockpile. And, we'll lose the unprecedented inspections and transparency we have today."

If no deal that the United States and five other powers actually might strike with the Iranians would be acceptable to Netanyahu, how does he propose to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat?

He spoke about ratcheting up international sanctions against Iran and keeping them in place until Iran ceased regional aggression, sponsorship of terrorism and threatens to annihilate Israel. But years of extraordinarily tough sanctions did not persuade the Iranians to abandon their nuclear program or prevent them moving it forward. Neither did cyberwarfare or a series of assassinations of Iranian scientists.

And if the United States was seen as walking away from a possible agreement, the international sanctions regime would likely crumble, not strengthen. Iranian hard-liners who oppose an agreement would be back in the driver's seat in Tehran, while those would want to see Iran rejoin the international community would be discredited and sidelined.

It is doubtful that Netanyahu really believes sanctions would end the Iranian nuclear program. That leaves one other option -- military force. Of course, Israel could order a military strike on Iran any time it chooses, but Israel's ability to inflict significant damage on Iran's widely dispersed and heavily defended nuclear facilities is limited. When the discussion turns to military action, what is really meant is U.S. military action.

It is understandable that a foreign leader speaking in the U.S. Congress would shy away from openly asking Washington to attack another country, especially after the experience of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Netanyahu also lobbied for.

We should recall Netanyahu's September 2002 testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, six months before the U.S. assault on Baghdad began, when he said: "It's not a question of whether Iraq's regime should be taken out but when should it be taken out; it's not a question of whether you'd like to see a regime change in Iran but how to achieve it."

Netanyahu may have learned from that experience. He knows that the U.S. public is weary of war and has no appetite for another military adventure in the Middle East. That's why he advocates policies that would put the United States on a path to military action without mentioning the words "military action."

This Israeli leader, who faces a tough election back home in two weeks, has mastered the art of policy vagueness. He applied the same strategy to the failed negotiations with the Palestinians last year, declaring he was in favor of a two-state solution but never putting forward a detailed proposal for where the border should be drawn -- or on any other substantive issue for that matter. His biggest demand once again was rhetorical -- that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

This is an Israeli leader who believes in the power of words -- especially his words. But words are no substitute for a strategy -- and that's where Netanyahu once again failed himself, his country and his audience.

Former CIA director was accused of mishandling classified information

Gen. David Petraeus pleaded guilty to federal charges Tuesday to end a probe into whether he provided classified information to his mistress when he was CIA director, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.

The New York Times first reported the plea deal talks, which would effectively end the Justice Department investigation.

On September 6, 2011, just days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States, Petraeus was sworn in as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. A little more than a year later, on November 9, 2012, he resigned from his CIA post, citing personal reasons.

He admitted to having an affair, and the following March apologized for that during a speech at the University of Southern California.

Petraeus allegedly provided classified intelligence to his lover, Paula Broadwell, while he was director of the CIA. The married mother of two and former military officer was writing a book about the general at the time.

The relationship came to light during an FBI investigation into a complaint that Broadwell was allegedly sending harassing e-mails to another woman who was close to Petraeus, a U.S. official told CNN in January.

The federal jury selected Tuesday is made up of eight men and 10 women, many of whom said they believed Tsarnaev was involved in the 2013 bombings that killed three people and left at least 264 injured.

The 18-member jury -- 12 primary jurors and six alternates -- includes a house painter eager to "serve my country," a man in his 20s who practices the Baha'i faith and speaks Farsi, and a water department employee who said he thinks the death penalty would be "the easy way out."

They will determine whether Tsarnaev is guilty of participating in the bombing, and they could be asked to impose the death penalty if they decide he is.

Tsarnaev is charged with one count of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death.

Prosecutors accuse Tsarnaev of working with his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to set off two bombs made from pressure cookers near the marathon's crowded finish line.

The bombs, packed with BB-like pellets and nails, exploded 12 seconds apart, spraying the crowd with shrapnel. The victims included an 8-year-old boy, a 29-year-old woman and a graduate student from China.

Three days later, authorities say, the brothers killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, then led police on a wild chase in which they threw explosives out the car windows and exchanged gunfire with police.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in the mayhem that night. He had been shot, suffered injuries from an explosion and had been run over by his fleeing brother, according to authorities.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found the next day, hiding in a boat in the backyard of a home in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Although Massachusetts hasn't had a death penalty on its books in three decades, and the state hasn't executed anyone since 1947, the death penalty is an option because the case is being tried in federal court -- where the death penalty remains an option for some crimes, including terror-related offenses.

Many of the jurors who made the final cut seemed willing to consider the death penalty.

One juror, a restaurant manager, said she would have no problem choosing the death penalty if the evidence was there. "I don't feel like I'm sending someone to death or life in prison," she said. "Their actions got them there. I'm following the law."

Another woman, an executive assistant at a law firm, said initially that she wasn't sure she could vote for the death penalty. But under questioning, she reconsidered, saying, "If I came to that decision based on the evidence I heard, then yes."